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Follow-ups and check-ins like this are exactly the sort of content I want to see, and why I subscribe.

I do have one question, though. All of these investigations were launched off suspicions after the Grand Jury Report? I guess maybe I don't know enough about what constitutes probable cause or whether there are any laws that regulate when and how an attorney general can investigate something. I agree that these investigations ought to happen, but it does seem odd that Catholic dioceses in other states can be investigated on the basis of the report from PN. Had there been other reports in those states that had never been pursued fully, and they took the opportunity to do so when the PN report dropped?

I don't know if my question is clear enough... I just think about the Kanakuk Kamps case that David and Nancy French reported about at The Dispatch a while back, and things my husband (a former Baptist) has talked about regarding similar stuff at the churches he grew up in. I've never heard of an AG declaring an investigation of all SBC-affiliated churches, for example. Is it easier to investigate Catholic dioceses because we have a hierarchy so there's usually a bishop or ordinary who bears responsibility, and because we tend to leave paper trails regarding the decisions? As opposed to protestant churches, where a disgraced pastor can just leave and found a new church in another city or state, and his previous church community may not even exist anymore so a responsible party is harder to pinpoint?

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Oct 1, 2021Liked by JD Flynn

Seriously Good Content...real work like this makes me happy to be a subscriber.

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Thank you for these updates! I was just wondering a few weeks ago whatever happened with all these investigations.

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Like Constantine calling for First Nicea, I sometimes wonder if this isn't God using civil authorities to cause the Church to clean things up. Sometimes, thanks to its human dimension, the Church needs the State like that.

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